


A Spark of Thunder

by feistymuffin



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Pacific Rim AU, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-30
Updated: 2017-12-30
Packaged: 2019-02-23 19:23:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13196901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feistymuffin/pseuds/feistymuffin
Summary: The Kaiju War is far from over and Mark doesn't have the luxury of dating when he's got so much responsibility. A charming Jaeger pilot makes a noteworthy entrance into his life, however, and he just might make an exception.





	A Spark of Thunder

**Author's Note:**

> it's a pacific rim au !!! why? because I *want one* that's why.
> 
> enjoy!! c:

Mark crouches and runs his hand through the Kaiju Blue ebbing up onto the sandy shore, sighing out a rough sound. The toxic goop is viscous and lumpy, and as his gloved fingers pass through the muck it sticks to the rubber in clumps like half-dried glue. Already the shore is littered with the remains of fish and sea creatures caught in the sludge, the sound of gulls sharp and copious as the environmental death toll rises. He looks up at his colleague, Dr. Newton Geiszler, and says, “This is bad, Newt.”

“How bad?” is his instant reply, along with a frown. The coastal Chinese weather, rainy and miserable with a dull, grey and cloudy backdrop of sky, fogs his glasses so badly with moisture that practically every minute he’s removing them to wipe them again. 

“Bad enough that I’m worried about the water in Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines,” Mark sighs again, flicking his fingers to rid them of the sapphire gunk. 

“I’ll call Pentecost,” Newt says, although he doesn’t sound like he’s looking forward to the experience, and moves away with his phone in hand. 

Staring out across the ocean Mark reaches into his bag with his clean hand for his voice recorder and switches it on. “Date: July sixteenth, twenty-twenty-three. Location: Macau coastline, four miles north of the city outskirts. Condition: contamination of marine body of water from deceased category three Kaiju, codename Stinger.” He puts the recorder between his teeth and removes his tainted glove, inverting it to keep the mess contained and stuffing it into a small plastic bag from his equipment kit. He ties it off and puts the little bag back into his kit, then takes his recorder back from his teeth and continues, “Early diagnostics from Dr. Geiszler confirm that the subject Kaiju had some form of biological response to damage which triggered a poisonous type of reaction within its blood as it comes in contact with the air.” He frowns. “The full impact of this phenomenon is unknown, but my hypothesized prediction is a near-catastrophic fallout of the sea life in the area with reverberations that reach hundreds of miles in every direction.”

He looks up at Newt as he walks to his side, pocketing his phone, and shuts off his recorder. “Pentecost isn’t exactly pleased with the news,” Newt relays, “but he said we’ll get the resources we need to clean this up.” 

Mark smirks, eyeing Newt’s slightly uneasy expression. “I bet he didn’t say it in as kind a way as that.” 

“And that’s not a bet I’m taking,” Newt grins, wiping his glasses. He goes to where his kit sits on the ground and opens it wide, pulling out gloves and bags and jars for specimens. “Let’s get the lead out. Better look busy when the press gets here to take pictures.” 

*

The gathering of samples is tedious and, coupled with the bad weather and extended work day that was already behind Mark when he was literally called out of bed to come and oversee this new mess, it makes his patience run very thin by the time he gets himself and his samples back to headquarters. Thankfully HQ is only in Hong Kong and not farther away. He would call it a stroke of luck except for the fact that a Kaiju showed up anyway, and then the Jaegers had to come and deal with it and make more work for the rest of them.

“Dr. Fischbach,” Pentecost greets, imposing and stiff in the doorway of the lab. Mark doesn’t look up, simply waves him in and keeps his eyes down on his notes as he reads off the machine in front of him. “I'm hoping you have something for me.”

Mark pauses the machine with the push of a button and swivels around in his chair, gesturing to the whiteboard beside him, scribbled on to completion without a scrap of space left. “I’ve got coffee for blood and I haven’t slept for more than five hours in a span of forty-seven, but I’m pretty sure I’m right when I say we’ve got a crisis on our hands, environmentally speaking.”

Pentecost’s face is stony, eyes boring holes through Mark at the news. “What kind of crisis are we talking here?” 

He pushes himself to roll past the marshal and across the gap between his lab tech and his computer. Coming to a stop Mark pulls up the HUD display with a hurried, precise movements and after a few taps the blue holographic screen highlights the last fifty seconds of the battle between the Kaiju Stinger—a barbed, tentacled and pincered monstrosity that looked like a scorpion-octopus-squid hybrid with bulky spider legs on steroids—and the Jaeger that brought it down, Thunder Colossus. 

“This Kaiju is unique, just like every one before it,” Mark tells the man at his shoulder. “When mortally wounded its body has a remarkable ability to oxidize its blood when it contacts air or water, and in doing that it emits poisonous fumes and becomes extremely toxic to touch, inhale and ingest.” Once the battle comes to the scene he needs Mark pauses it. Frozen in frame, Thunder Colossus is using its axe attachment to cleave off an entire limb of Stinger’s which drops into the ocean. “Here is where the most damage was taken except for the killing blow, and here you can see the colour of the Kaiju’s blood change where it lies in the water.” He points to the large blot of coloured blue in the morning lit water, turning a darker shade instantly as it spreads. “The fact that it was raining all day and all through the battle helps nothing. It probably made it all much worse.”

“Do you have any good news?” Pentecost says, not without obvious but muted frustration.

Mark shrugs, gesturing across the expansive lab to where Newt is working away studiously on his samples of the Kaiju’s remains. “Newt says the biological process wears itself out after only a few hours, which means the cells die abnormally fast because of all the energy required to power the poisonous reaction.” He sighs, rubbing a hand over his sore, exhausted eyes. “Because Kaiju blood is already toxic it’s somewhat of a relief, because this reaction appears to nullify the normal toxicity of the blood after the full chemical process from this Kaiju. The worst of it is behind us—although any Kaiju Blue that’s ingested by wildlife will still probably be lethal—but in the few hours when the blood was spreading through the water at its most potent, the toll may have already been too great to even fathom.”

Pentecost lets out a slow breath through his nose, giving Mark an up-and-down look of accepting consternation before nodding, murmuring, “I’ll be back,” and making his way across the lab towards Newt. 

Once Pentecost is gone Mark rolls back over to the counter and resumes taking notes, eyes speedily eating up information fed out through the machine analyzing the sample within it, a fish carcass contaminated with the unique Kaiju Blue. It’s spitting out readings at an alarming rate and Mark can barely keep up with all that it’s telling him. None of it is good, but it appears that the process happened quickly enough that the full process of contamination to death happened within a span of minutes. It bodes well for weeding out sick creatures from healthy ones, if the contamination does prove to be contagious from organism to organism, like Mark thinks it might. 

The lab doors open and Mark doesn't look up from his work, assuming it's the marshal taking his leave. A moment later, apresence over his shoulder has him glancing up, but it’s not Pentecost or Newt. The stranger, a man about his height with charcoal hair and strong eyebrows over crisp, icy blue eyes, smiles crookedly at him. His lips are almost too pink against the white of his skin and the brown of his short, trim beard when he says, “You must be Fischbach.”

“That really depends on who’s asking,” Mark replies dryly, swivelling to face him and leaning back in his chair. “Typically people introduce themselves before hazarding guesses at other people’s identities.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” the man wonders amusedly. He holds out a hand, though, and as Mark shakes it he takes note of the dusky green leather jacket the man’s wearing. A hallmark of Jaegers, the personalized jackets for duo or trio pilots are meant as a status symbol more than anything else. It does help in times like this though, when confronted with one, to know right away what you’re dealing with. 

“You took down Stinger,” Mark says, mentally connecting the dots. Jack McLoughlin, copilot of Thunder Colossus along with his best friend and questionably, possibly girlfriend Signe Hansen. It’s something of a gossip mill here in the Shatterdome, no doubt fuelled by couples like Jack and Signe who copilot but appear to be nothing more than friends. Not much else to do in the monotony of repairing Jaegers and committing oneself to endless research over Kaiju remains. It’s a glamorous life, taking down the Kaiju—to anyone not living it. 

“Me and Wiishu, yeah,” says Jack. His grin shifts towards sheepish, but beneath it there’s some pride. “I heard there was some backlash, though. Something about the Kaiju Blue?”

Mark blinks. It’s more than a little rare for a pilot to come all the way down to the labs just to confirm a story. “Uh, yeah. Yeah, there’s something in the blood of this last one, the oxidization made its hemoglobins toxic for several hours. We’re still cataloguing and calculating the total loss of life, and extrapolating the effects.”

“Whew,” Jack whistles. “I know I’m in a lab when you’re throwing around words like _extrapolate_ and _hemoglobins_. You’re trying to scare me off, aren’t you?” the Jaeger pilot asks shrewdly, squinting briefly before cracking a smile. “Using big, fancy words to intimidate me.” 

“If you’re intimidated by the word hemoglobin then you are in the wrong place,” Mark muses, stuffing his hands in his lab coat pockets. “We haven’t even gotten to the big ones.”

Jack props a hip against the counter, arms folding across his chest with a creak of leather. His lips quirk slightly when he says, “Deoxyribonucleic acid,” and then his mouth breaks into a grin. “That do anything for you?”

Mark laughs, more brashly than he means to but Jack’s grinning so widely his eyes are crinkled at the corners. He opens his mouth to reply but then he sees Newt and Pentecost coming over from Newt’s side of the lab and he straightens automatically. They reach them in no time, with Pentecost’s long, brisk strides eating up the distance and Newt scurrying to keep up with them, and they come to a stop at Jack’s side.

“Dr. Fischbach, I see you’ve met the world’s most recent saviour, Mr. McLoughlin,” Pentecost says, apparently more for something to say than an actual observation. His gaze snaps between the two of them before fixating on the notes under Mark’s elbow. “When will you know more about the environmental effects of the Kaiju?” 

“With some luck I can have the preliminary estimate to you by the end of the day,” Mark says, but he’s dreading the words even as he says them because it’ll mean no sleep for another seven hours at least. “If not then, by the morning.”

“Good. Let me know at once if there’s any changes.” He turns his cool gaze on Newt. “Be sure to do the same, Dr. Geiszler.” Then with a significant look at Jack, who stiffens visibly and drops his arms to his side, he’s gone from the lab. 

Newt grunts the moment the door shuts behind him, rubbing his hand over his face. “He absolutely adores tormenting lesser people, I just know it. No one is that imposing unless they mean to be.” He lifts his eyes to Jack, then, and his face brightens. “Hey, you’re Thunder Colossus’ pilot.”

“One of ‘em,” Jack agrees, smiling. “Don’t worry about Marshal Pentecost. He’s got a lot to deal with. I hear the leaders of the Pan Pacific Defense Corps are really losing their minds about the riots in Manila and the increase in Breach activity, so he’s getting the brunt of it from them, and I really don’t think this news about this Kaiju Blue two-point-oh is going to rub them the right way either.”

Newt rolls his eyes. “You’d think it would occur to them that the marshal is the only person keeping the Shatterdome together at this point. Crimson Typhoon is on deck almost permanently in Hong Kong port and surrounding areas, so he brings in a new Jaeger to help out here, and in the midst of getting heat for that, right away he gets flak for something else he can’t control.” 

“There’s more politics to this than there is warfare,” Mark mutters, half-turning back to his notes.

“War is politics, even the Kaiju War,” the pilot says to that, and the other two men nod their agreement. 

With a grumble Newt nods towards his end of the lab and says, “Well, it’ll be a late night tonight, Fischy, my man. We better get started.”

Mark flushes at the nickname—something Newt once said is because he’s “the Fisch to his Newt” which makes absolutely no sense, but it’s never stopped him from using the nickname in the slightest. “Get out of my lab, Newt.”

With a smirk and a wave Newt traipses back to his side of the room and Mark lifts his eyes to Jack, who’s studiously examining his fingernails. He waits suspiciously for the ridicule, and he isn’t disappointed. “Well, _Fischy_ ,” Jack says gleefully, and Mark winces, “I’d better get out of your hair.”

The scientist rolls his eyes even as his face heats, hunching his shoulders and swivelling back to his work. “Please do.”

“I’m hurt,” Jack pouts, and Mark glances at him to see his lower lip stuck out pathetically. When Mark is unmoved he loses the pout and smiles, lopsided and charming and diabolical in its effectiveness in making him weak-kneed and curly-stomached. “If it’s not too much trouble, I’ll swing by and bug you some other time.” 

“Something tells me that you’re trouble whether you mean to be or not,” Mark says, eyeing him. 

“You’re not wrong,” Jack chuckles, leaning a hand on the counter by Mark’s arm. “So is that a no to my return?”

“It’s not a no,” Mark murmurs, and blue eyes smile at him. Jack backs up towards the doors, grinning madly, then turns on his heel and strides out without a word. Mark sits there, staring confusedly at the sprawl of the word _McLoughlin_ across the back of his shoulders for a long moment before he hastily stands and calls out, “I didn’t say it was a yes!” and he hears loud, light laughter in the hall before the heavy double doors swing shut. 

*

Codename Stinger’s ultra-toxic blood is a minor catastrophe, causing almost total marine genocide in southeastern coastal Asia’s waters and human deaths in the thousands from widespread contamination of water supplies by the remaining blood-slash-seawater muck, which, if ingested, is still very harmful and can easily be lethal. Thankfully it appears that the poison is not contagious, a small miracle considering its effects in water, and while the fallout is colossal the actual sickness caused by the poison doesn’t perpetuate past the first day. In the way that minor catastrophes go, though, the world pays it all very little mind after the first week as if the problem had been dealt with and is fully negligible after the fact. And while Mark would love for that to be the case, he still has cleanup to oversee and data to analyze. 

Jack hasn’t come in to see him again since his visit six days before, the afternoon of the battle with Stinger, and while Mark has been plenty busy in his absence, he had still… hoped. He had hoped for something bright and warm in the cold, dismal dank of the Shatterdome. He had hoped for something lifelike and comforting in the metallic homelessness of the base’s laboratory where he and Newt worked. 

Jaeger pilots are busy by definition, Mark knows just from gossip alone. If they’re not ripping apart Kaiju then they’re in extensive training, with constant upkeep of combat skills and copiloting simulations to improve cohesion between drift-compatible partners. In between all that are meals, sleep, and a meagre fraction of free time. It makes sense that Jack wouldn’t want to spend what little time he has to himself with Mark. 

It doesn’t matter that if it were the reverse, if Mark was the Jaeger pilot and Jack the shut-in environmental scientist, then that wouldn’t be true. It doesn’t matter, because Jack isn’t Mark, and he’s allowed to want or not want whatever he pleases. 

So it’s a shock when a heavy hand drops onto his shoulder while his headphones are in, blaring instrumentals and deafening him to the world. He jumps a mile high and whirls around in his chair, almost toppling right out of it when he sees Jack standing there. The pilot’s quick reflexes keep him anchored in his chair, though, securing him with a hand on each shoulder. Mark yanks out his earbuds and quells his racing heart, and says in a croak, “I think you just shaved ten years off my life.”

“I’ll give you mine, then,” Jack replies, cheeky, and Mark snorts. Letting him go and standing upright the pilot continues, “It’s good to see you. Sorry for not making good on my plans to come by here. It’s been a crazy week.”

“Has it?” Mark wonders dully. 

Jack nods, running a fingertip along the seam of his leather jacket’s cuff. “Signe and I were… well, essentially out of the country from two hours after I left here until about three hours ago. Lots of press work and stuff like that after taking down a Kaiju.” 

Mark nods, perking slightly. It’s true that right after bringing down Kaiju, the pilots responsible were all but celebrities to the world. People would want to know details, how they conquered it, what was going through their heads during it all. Simple footage wasn’t enough—the world had to know what it felt like to kill a Kaiju. “Understandable.”

The Jaeger pilot smirks knowingly and Mark feels apprehension slither its way up his throat. “Newt tells me you’ve been sulking in my absence.”

Mark scoffs, looking down at his lap where his fingers are already fidgeting. “Hardly,” he says standoffishly, but Jack doesn’t look fooled. He looks delighted, in fact, as he leans closer. “I, uh—”

“Can I steal you for dinner?” Jack asks him, nodding his head back towards the doors to the hall. “I bet you could use some fresh air, too. It’s a beautiful day outside.”

“Oh, I—I’ve got piles of stuff waiting for me to finish them,” Mark says hesitantly, scrubbing his palms nervously over his knees and looking over at said stacks of paper. “Pentecost said—”

“Pentecost, Shmentecost,” Jack says breezily, and in one smooth action he takes Mark’s hand and pulls him to his feet. Blood rushes to his face and Mark lets himself bask in the feeling of Jack’s leather jacket against him, the smell of his body and the brightness in his blue eyes as Mark stands so close they could kiss, if he just leaned in. “All work and no play makes Jack a sad boy, because his friend Mark should really learn to have some fun and take a break.”

“Jack’s friend Mark has a lot of work to do,” Mark tells him dryly, skin heating where Jack has him firmly in his grasp. “And since this is still very much an issue, I can’t just—”

“Oh, sure you can,” the pilot coaxes happily, sliding his palms down Mark’s arms, brushing over the sleeves of his lab coat until his fingers wrap securely around Mark’s. “Here, I’ll help.” With that, he turns and pulls Mark towards the large swinging doors that lead out to the hall, to the rest of the Shatterdome. 

“Jack, I’m serious, I really have to—” Mark starts uneasily, but Jack just sends him a perky grin over his shoulder and Mark’s feet mutinously carry him after the charismatic pilot. 

Before they reach the main docking bay where Crimson Typhoon and Thunder Colossus are sitting in their bays, fully repaired and waiting to be deployed once more, Mark is walking freely at Jack’s side. Jack lets go of his hand before they enter the docking bay, as it’s usually flooded with people, and Mark is glad for the lack of attention. Although, in his lab coat and beside a Jaeger pilot, he still draws more than his regular share of focus. 

Jack leads them to the dining hall and right to the line of people waiting for their turn to load a tray with food. It’s close to dinner time so people are pouring into the hall, and it’s not long until people are crowded behind them in line. Jack is pressed to his side, shoulder to shoulder and angled slightly towards one another, and Mark knows he’s in deep trouble when Jack smiles at him roguishly and winks. 

They get their food in short order and then Jack is bringing Mark over to the side of the dining hall that Mark usually avoids—the side where the Jaeger pilots often sit. The Irishman swings a leg over the bench of a partially occupied table, and Mark hesitates lengthily before following suit. Across the bench is a woman, brunette and slim with wide, kind eyes, plush lips and a cute, pouty smile. She’s wearing a dark green leather jacket that matches the shade of Jack’s so it’s moot when she introduces herself, “Hey, I’m Signe.”

“Mark,” he replies, the uneven word barely a greeting. 

She smiles, though, casting an amused look at her copilot before turning back to Mark. “So you’re the lab rat that has our boy twisted up in knots.”

“Signe,” Jack says hastily, leaning and slapping her arm across the table.

“Um, I don’t know about any knot-twisting, but yeah, Jack is a friend,” Mark says uneasily. “Listen, I can sit somewhere else—”

“Oh, hush,” she says, laughing and waving a slender hand at him placatingly. “You’re welcome here.” She reclines on the bench, lifting a foot to plant it on the seat and taking up the entire thing. “Don’t be intimidated by us. We’re average bears, just like you. Besides, Jack tells me—along with the gossip around here—that you’re something of a Kaiju superstar yourself.”

“Wildly untrue,” Mark snorts. “I’m an environmental scientist.”

“The _leading_ environmental scientist for Kaiju-related environmental exposure,” Signe says, and Mark flushes when he realizes she’s directly quoting from his small blurb on the Shatterdome’s informational, interactive maps placed in every area of the headquarters. When touched, Mark’s lab lights up and the map provides a small voice recording that outlines who he is, his job description and what he does for the war effort. It’s not a feature unique to him—the map does it for nearly every room in the Shatterdome, all semi-important to important personnel, but while Mark knows he’s a VIP in terms of Shatterdome hierarchy it’s quite another to believe and accept it. 

“Yes, well, I don’t do nearly as much for the effort as someone like you—” Mark begins, but both pilots laugh and he clamps his mouth shut. 

“The aftermath matters as much as the conflict,” Signe says seriously, sobering. She twirls her fork dextrously between her fingers. “If there’s nothing left at the end of the day, what is there for us to protect?”

“We’re just the faces of the War,” Jack shrugs. “We’re not all of it.”

“Jaeger pilots with drift compatibility like yours are rarer than goddamn unicorns,” Mark argues. Both pilots seem unaffected by his words, though, and Jack stuffs a spoonful of mashed potatoes into his mouth. “There are only a dozen active Jaegers in the world right now, and all of them have pilots that have been whittled down from groups of hundreds, thousands of applicants and endless trials and simulations to find the absolute best candidates. You guys are the literal cream of the crop.” 

“We are aware,” Signe sighs, though she’s smiling just slightly. Jack nods, mouth full, and hums to get her attention, then garbles out a few unintelligible words through his food. She nods in return then says to Mark, “Jack is right. It’s not the status that makes the pilot, it’s the Jaeger.”

“I think,” Mark murmurs slowly, eyeing both of them for a long moment, “you’ve got that backwards.” He smiles. “It’s the pilots that make the Jaeger.”

For a brief second they’re both still and wide-eyed, surprised at the praise. Signe cracks a smile as Jack struggles to swallow his enormous mouthful of food and after he does, his throat straining obviously enough to give Mark palpitations, he says to the scientist, “If I didn’t know any better I’d swear you liked us, or something.”

“Let’s not get carried away,” Mark muses, and chuckles alongside the pilots. 

Conversation lulls as Mark and Jack eat and Signe appears content to idly play on her phone as they do. A few times Mark feels Jack’s knee brush his under the table, or the slow drag of fingertips along his thigh, but nothing is said between them. Mark certainly isn’t going to bring it up for fear of embarrassing Jack in front of his copilot and somehow spooking him away, but the more he gets to know the Jaeger pilot the more Mark thinks that it would be pretty much impossible to do so. 

Mark is the last to finish eating, and as he chews his final mouthful and wipes his hands on a napkin Jack nudges him and asks, “What do you say to having some fun?”

“Oh, I should probably get back to work,” Mark says regretfully. It sounds lamenting even to him, so he knows he’s not fooling anybody. 

“Nonsense,” Signe says, getting to her feet smoothly. Jack follows suit, gracefully standing, and Mark clambers to copy them. Jack swipes his tray with a wink when Mark goes to pick it up, grabbing his own as well, and follows Signe to where the garbage and tray returns are. After scraping her tray clean and plopping it onto the other trays she turns to Mark while Jack does the same for his and Mark’s trays. “Now, how about some down time well spent?”

“Go _away_ , Wiishu,” Jack sighs, giving her a speaking look with a significant glance at Mark. 

_Well, that was inconspicuous,_ Mark thinks, flushing when Signe smirks.

“Have fun, boys,” she says, her teeth showing with a quick grin. She waves and turns, then tosses over her shoulder, “I’ll be playing ball with the triplets when you’re done, Jack.” 

Jack turns bright eyes on Mark, whose body immediately seizes with no minor amount of anticipation. “You like swimming?”

“I… can swim,” is what Mark hesitantly goes with.

The pilot laughs, patting Mark on the shoulder and steering him towards the south end of the Shatterdome, where he knows the training rooms are and, apparently, a pool to go with them. Jack guides them to the right room, large and secluded to house the Olympic-size swimming pool, and right on to the men’s locker room. He goes directly to a specific locker and unlocks it swiftly, digging out two pairs of swim trunks. He hands one to Mark with a grin. 

“They’ll fit you, I think, but just barely,” Jack says, already shucking off his jacket and hanging it in the locker. Mark flushes and stares at the shorts in his hands, feeling the material between his fingers with trepidation. Jack sees that look and pauses as he starts to lift his t-shirt up. “They’re clean, I promise.”

“No, it’s not that,” Mark says quickly, eyes helplessly glued to where he can see Jack’s treasure trail peeking at the waistline of his pants. “I—I just, uh—”

“I’ll go out first,” Jack says breezily, paving right over Mark’s feeble attempt at expressing his insecurity. He pulls off his shirt and then Mark has a lot more to look at than just a flash of tummy. “I like to warm up with a couple laps anyway.” He unfastens his belt, his fingers as carefree as his words, and then Mark has to turn his back when he sees Jack start to push down the entirety of his bottom half’s garments in one motion. His face and neck are hot, flaming with embarrassment and desire at the thought of Jack being naked, right behind him. He listens to the rustle of the trunks as Jack slips them on, then glances over his shoulder when a pale hand rests there. “I’m going. See you out there?”

“Yeah,” Mark says, voice cracking at the sight of Jack’s hip bones, delightfully directing his eyes to the centre of Jack’s groin. “Uh, yeah. Be right out.”

Jack smiles and leaves, and Mark takes a moment to breathe before he strips himself efficiently, nervously, scrambling to pull the shorts on and keeping his nakedness restricted to scant seconds. He hangs his lab coat, which he really should’ve left in the lab, beside Jack’s leather jacket and stuffs the rest of his clothes unceremoniously into the locker on a shelf. Then, bare feet slapping on the tile, he retraces their path to the pool and pushes the door open. 

True to his word Jack is in the middle of swimming a lap. His form is perfect, the lines of his white skin all down his back a tempting pattern of muscle and strength, and he breast strokes to the far side before surfacing, whipping his hair and casting a line of water through the air as he wipes his face. Mark doesn’t look away in time and when Jack glances up their eyes meet. 

Caught, Mark hesitates where he stands and Jack pushes himself up onto the side of the pool, sitting on the edge and waving him over. Mark moves his rubbery legs and he stays standing a moment too long at Jack’s side before lowering himself to the edge and dipping his legs into the warm water. 

“You like the view?” Jack asks him, smoothing his hair back from his eyes. His eyelashes are dark with moisture, his skin wetly glistening under the fluorescent lights, and Mark has to swallow before he can make himself speak. 

“You swim very well,” Mark says, instead of answering the flirtatious question. 

“I used to be an Olympian, before the Kaiju War,” Jack tells him, mouth half-lifted in a smile at Mark’s blatant shock. “No medals, though I certainly got enough chances before it all went to hell. The twenty-twelve Olympics in London were my debut. I didn’t place, but Signe got bronze. In Rio in twenty-sixteen we both did good, sixth and ninth, but no medals that time. Twenty-twenty, Tokyo, was supposed to be my real shining moment but with Kaiju Saigai’s attack on Yokohama in twenty-nineteen that whole dream went down the drain.” He shrugs blithely, as if the loss of his career was but a small grievance. “Signe and I trained together, even though it was blasphemous to some, a Dane and an Irishman, two Olympians training together from different countries. But it worked for us. We’d been friends since we were little, both swimmers since we could crawl.”

Mark nods. He remembers the attack on Yokohama—he had been finishing his last year for his doctorate at UCLA. It was in the middle of lecture when the professor put up the news channel on the projector. Saigai, the very first category four ever to ascend from the Breach, was monstrous—armour-plated and long-jawed with enormous clawed feet and a thick, destructive prehensile tail. It razed a third of Yokohama to the ground before the combined effort of Raleigh and Yancy Beckett in the American Jaeger Gipsy Danger and the Japanese duo Kotetsu Yuu and Yuki Amada, pilots of Rebel Fire, brought the monster down. By that time, though, the Kaiju Saigai had well earned its name, Disaster. 

“I’m sorry,” Mark says, after what’s probably too long a pause.

Jack shrugs, smiling, and leans his damp shoulder into Mark’s dry one for a moment before sitting straight again. “It is what it is. I swim for the pleasure of it, not for fame or bragging rights. No matter what, I can always swim.” 

Mark shifts his weight slightly on the pool ledge, staring down at his distorted feet in the water. “So, how’d you get signed up for the Jaeger program?” 

“Originally it was Signe’s idea,” Jack tells him. “We were a little disillusioned with life after the Tokyo Olympics were cancelled, and in the face of all that death and tragedy we didn’t know what to do with ourselves. I was mad at myself, because, how dare I be upset about this when people in Japan lost their lives, their loved ones, their homes, you know? But it was a tough blow, to have the rug ripped out from under my feet. We didn’t know what to do so we started kickboxing and karate. We sparred with each other, but even letting out our aggression didn’t help us kick the melancholy and anger. So I suggested we go to Japan to help with the relief effort, and she agreed.”

He lets out a slow breath and the corner of his mouth curls up. “Being good swimmers didn’t help us a lot, since a majority of the damage was inland, but we were young and strong and we were willing to do whatever was asked. They put us to work in search and rescue, running streets and searching buildings that were still standing for anyone trapped or lost, and that’s when we ran into Rebel Fire’s pilots.

“They weren’t in their Jaeger, and if Signe hadn’t recognized them we might not be here today.” He laughs a little. “Signe and I ran up to them to tell them about a collapsed roof on a civilian and his dog and they start yelling at us in rapid-fire Japanese, and of course we don’t know a word of it, so Signe starts yelling back at them. Then someone comes along in the middle of us yelling incoherently back and forth and says to all four of us, “You, Jaeger pilots! Get moving, there’s a tanker that needs lifting in the next district!” 

“Yuu and Amada left after that,” Jack recalls, “but Signe and I stayed to find someone else to get help for the man. We helped for about three weeks, nearly dawn until dusk every day, before Signe asked me one day if I would go with her to this appointment. Thinking nothing of it, I agreed.”

“She brought you to Jaeger trials in a post-Kaiju zone without telling you?” Mark wonders, grinning at the audacity of it. 

“Yep,” the pilot laughs. “She probably had an inkling that we’d ace every test, but I sure as hell had no idea. And we did. We blew everyone else out of the water, and that afternoon we were signing contracts for the Jaeger program.”

“Amazing,” Mark murmurs, watching water slowly drip down the side of Jack’s face. 

“It really is,” Jack agrees softly with an equally soft smile. He nudges Mark, then hops off the side of the pool and slides into the water. His head ducks under the surface briefly and then he’s popping back up right away, wiping his hair out of his face with a grin. “Now, let’s get your swim on.”

“Oh,” Mark blurts, and all of the ease of their conversation goes up in smoke. “I, uh—”

“Come on,” Jack cajoles gently, treading water in front of him. His wet hands lift to latch around Mark’s ankles and the scientist swallows heavily. “I won’t let anything happen to you. I’ve got you.”

Mark chews his lip, idly kicking his feet in the water. Jack hangs on, doesn’t let go for a second and Mark can feel the pilot’s fingers caressing his ankles, sliding up and down his legs. “Okay,” he finally says, then after another long hesitation he lowers himself into the water.

It’s warm as he sinks in, and instantly warmer when Jack crowds him back against the wall of the pool, arms bracketing Mark’s shoulders. The Irishman leans in, so close that Mark knows he must be going for a kiss, so without really thinking it through he just ducks down under the water, swimming away from Jack’s too-appealing body, too-tempting mouth and too-charming eyes.

He surfaces a few feet away, treading water, and he regrets his actions at once when he sees the playful grin spreading Jack’s lips, baring his teeth in mirth. “You can’t hide from me,” Jack coos, and Mark’s gut coils in a mixture of anxiety and want. “And you certainly can’t run. Not here.”

“I could try,” Mark says, spitting out water when his chin bobs beneath the surface. He shakes his hair from his face when it starts to drip into his eyes. 

“You’d fail,” Jack tells him in a purr, coming closer. Mark hastens to compensate for the growing lack of space between them but it’s futile, the ex-Olympian is too fast for anything he does to make any difference, and before he can protest the proximity Jack is upon him, pale fingers hooking in the snug waistline of his shorts and making him suck in his stomach in surprise. 

“Um,” Mark hedges, though he’s not sure what he’ll say, what he could possibly say to diffuse the sexual tension strung between them. Jack’s hands don’t do anything—it’s just his fingers against Mark’s hip, hooked onto his trunks and keeping them close, but to Mark it’s an anchor’s worth of weight, an anvil of meaning and intention and purpose.

Slowly Jack frowns, looking more and more unsure as time passes, and he lets go when Mark doesn’t speak. The scarce few inches between them expands and it takes Mark a second to realize Jack is swimming backwards, away from him. “I… I just remembered,” the pilot mutters, “Wiishu and I have something to do.”

Mark hears the lie, knows that he’s the cause and wants to slap himself at the dejected look in Jack’s eyes. But he nods, lets him pull away like it doesn’t gut him to see Jack unable to look him in the face. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Jack says after a long pause, and with a final, short glance at Mark’s chin he’s swimming away to the edge of the pool, lifting himself out and quickly exiting to the locker rooms. 

Mark swims to the ladder on the side of the pool and gets out once Jack is gone, but he waits, counts to two hundred in his head before going into the locker room. The Jaeger pilot is nowhere to be found, his belongings all gone from the locker with their things, and a big, fluffy towel lay folded and waiting for him on the bench nearest the locker. Mark bites his lip, chastising his cowardice as he dries off and redresses, and he doesn’t let himself look too long at the small plaque on the front of the locker door that reads _S. McLoughlin_. As he slips on his lab coat, still-damp hair tickling his forehead and the back of his neck, Mark wonders if he’ll ever see him again. 

*

He does—almost two weeks later, but he does.

It’s melodramatic to say that Mark has been thinking nonstop about Jack, about how he messed everything up and what would've happened if he had just given some sign to the flirtatious pilot that he was in fact interested, but it would also be accurate. Newt has told him multiple times over the past thirteen days that he’s being mopey, unreasonable, and downright depressing, especially since it’s just a matter of finding Jack and explaining that he’s not an asshole. He wasn’t trying to ice Jack out of trying to woo him, he was just… shy—horribly, irritatingly shy, and he doesn’t know how to function when someone as gorgeous as Jack, someone whose name is practically a household word, shows interest in him.

_No worries there,_ Mark thinks to himself, and watches with hungry eyes as Jack and Signe walk through the dining hall while he waits in line. Mark sticks out like a sore thumb in the line in his lab coat, since he’s one of the few scientists in the Shatterdome who actually prefers to wear one, but he doesn’t draw Jack’s eye. The Jaeger pilots stare straight ahead and jog through the hall, clearly on task with something urgent, and Mark watches them go with mixed feelings. 

It’s the first time he’s seen Jack, even in passing, since their short-lived swim and the sight of him feeds something starving in Mark’s heart. It isn’t until the overhead klaxons start to blare minutes later, a surefire sign of a Kaiju emergence and imminent landfall, that Mark knows why they were in such a hurry. 

He sprints back to his lab, ignoring the buzzing in his pocket that’s probably Newt telling him to get his ass back pronto, and skids to a stop as he rounds the last corner, almost colliding with the fast-moving herd of Wei Tang brothers. The triplets give him a series of long and complicated looks before moving on, speaking in quick Mandarin as they practically run down the hall. Shrugging off the encounter Mark makes his way into the lab, doors slamming shut behind him. 

“Over here,” Newt calls, and Mark hurries to him. On Newt’s monitor is a pinging dot, the Kaiju’s position, shown on a global map. Its position is subtly changing, gliding minutely across the Pacific, and the projected path shows its landfall will be somewhere up the Chinese coast, near Taipei. Mark watches as it sneaks slowly across the ocean, and as the estimate for the path refines, it narrows until the line is assuredly fixed on the island of Taiwan. 

“It’s fast,” Mark whispers into the silence, and beside him Newt wordlessly nods. 

After that Mark leaves Newt alone to do his work, and Mark has plenty of his own to be doing. There’s still the mess of Stinger’s assault to clean up, and after that the mess of this new Kaiju will provide him with even more work. 

An hour later there’s a live chopper video feed of the Kaiju, codenamed Xuánwǔ according to the alert on Newt’s HUD. It has a great mess of spines covering its body and a massive shell on its back, and when the helicopter circles around to its front Mark can just make out a flat, round head with a gaping jaw protruding from the shell as it powers through the Pacific’s waves.

Two hours after that it comes within sight of Taiwan and the Jaegers Crimson Typhoon and Thunder Colossus are there to meet it, having been transported in preparation for the creature’s arrival. Mark foregoes any pretence of work after that, his eyes fastened surely to the display over Newt’s desk that shows the battle unfolding. Both of them watch in quiet awe as Crimson Typhoon and Thunder Colossus systematically wear down the giant, trading blows, cleaving off chunks of it with Colossus’ axe weapon and Crimson Typhoon’s third arm and saw attachments. It’s over an hour later before it’s finally vanquished, sinking below the waves three miles offshore of Taiwan. 

The Jaegers are victorious, and Mark watches with a bittersweet twinge in his stomach as Thunder Colossus holds up a hand and Crimson Typhoon retracts its saw blades to high-five the European Jaeger. As they lower their arms, however, the waves around them distort, and from the depths springs Xuánwǔ—or rather its head, which is extended on a long neck that was hidden within its shell. Its jaws clamp around Thunder Colossus’ leg and with a mighty chomp, the Jaeger’s leg is severed above the knee.

Bellowing its success the Kaiju turns on Crimson Typhoon as Colossus falls to its knees but already the red Jaeger is swinging its third arm high, saw blades back in full force, and its Thundercloud formation makes short work of the wounded Kaiju, cutting into the rubbery neck of the beast until its head is separated completely. 

Mark’s heart has long since stopped, though, and the last thing on his mind is the ecological impact when he watches helplessly as both Xuánwǔ and Thunder Colossus collapse into the sea. Crimson Typhoon is there immediately, reaching down under the water but Mark is turning, ripping off and tossing his lab coat onto his chair as he runs back out of the lab.

“Mark?” Newt calls behind him. 

He doesn’t stop, slowing down only to take corners, but the sprint to Pentecost’s office still takes minutes. Horrid thoughts plague him, tormenting him with possibilities and every single missed opportunity he let pass him by that he could've mended things with Jack. He has to force himself to stop and catch his breath outside the marshal’s office, and then he’s knocking as politely yet urgently as he can against the metal door. 

Stacker Pentecost opens the door after a breathless few moments and Mark is blurting out words before the man can even ask him his purpose. “I need to know the status of Thunder Colossus’ crew.”

The marshal is so taciturn that Mark is starting to think he somehow didn’t hear him, but then Pentecost opens his door wider and gestures him inside with a put-out expression. Mark scurries into the room and Pentecost shuts the door behind him. 

“Bear in mind,” Marshal Pentecost says with some wry humour, “that this is only happening because your quick action regarding the pollution of the South China and Philippine Seas was so helpful that it actually alleviated the problem more than could be expected, given the severity.” He waves a hand to the display over his desk console. “I got word from the doctors seeing to them in Taiwan. They’re alright. A little beat up, but alright. They’re headed home as we speak.”

“Thanks,” Mark says breathily, finally sighing out the tense clench of his lungs. He turns to go, then pauses and half-turns back towards the marshal. “Uh, one more thing?”

Pentecost’s right eyebrow lifts in question.

“Where might they be staying, when they get home?” the scientist queries, tentative.

“Med bay, per doctor’s orders,” Pentecost replies. He gives Mark a stony look. “As for after the med bay, I suggest you find out yourself.”

“Right, sir,” Mark stutters, and gratefully flees his office.

*

Mark waits outside the med bay doors, anxiety and nervousness chewing up his insides like cud, for about ten minutes before he acknowledges that his waiting impatiently doesn’t alter Thunder Colossus’ crew’s arrival time. For what seems like years but is realistically only a few hours, he burns away time in his lab instead. He gets initial readings of toxicity for the Kaiju Blue from Xuánwǔ’s carcass in the Philippine Sea off the eastern coast of Taiwan, and he draws up a predictive model for the adverse effects on marine life in the vicinity. He sends it all to Pentecost the moment he finishes compiling it into a debriefing, and then he’s making tracks out of the lab. 

The trip to Hong Kong from Taiwan is a short one, relatively speaking, but the perceived total wait time from Colossus’ downfall to when Mark is allowed in to see him is astronomical compared to the actual time it takes. Mark’s been checking his phone religiously since the meeting with Pentecost, even during work which is something he does not do, so when the med bay nurses finally let him in he knows it’s been four hours and seventeen minutes since Jack’s Jaeger fell. 

Thunder Colossus’ pilots are both asleep when Mark is admitted into their room, and he’s a millisecond away from saying he’ll come back later when the nurse says kindly, “Don’t fret, hun, they’ll likely be up soon. You stay put.” 

She shuts the door after her and Mark turns to look at Jack, lying still and pale in a hospital bed that makes him look smaller than he is, more frail. His head is wrapped in white, spotless gauze in a thin band that dips down over his forehead and his left leg is propped up in a sling, thankfully without a cast but wrapped snugly from thigh to ankle in tight bandages. Signe’s left leg is identically wrapped and elevated, and her right shoulder is bandaged heavily. 

Slowly Mark goes to the chair at Jack’s bedside and lowers himself into it, hands fidgeting restlessly. He can’t make himself stop looking at Jack’s face, so drawn and thin, so tired even in sleep. Vaguely, worriedly he wonders if he put those dark circles under his eyes, if Jack was kept up at night like he was, haunted by thoughts of them together that now would never become true. 

He doesn’t have to wait long for him to wake up, and Mark’s head lifts from doing some analysis of the spread of Kaiju Blue on his phone to see piercing blue eyes slanting open tediously, as though desperately clinging to sleep. They do open, though, and then Jack is blinking at the room, blinking at Mark before his focus refines and he gains some depth in his expression. 

“What are you doing here?” the pilot croaks, and Mark quickly gets up to hand him the water on his bedside table. Jack takes it and sits up, gulping several mouthfuls before setting it back down with Mark’s aid. 

“I… I was worried,” Mark says after a pause. He sits in the chair again and swallows at the dull, slightly irritated look that Jack sends his way. Mark steels himself against that look, a look that he definitely deserves, and murmurs, “I missed you.”

“And it takes a hospital visit for you to come and see me?” Jack snaps, then glances at Signe's sleeping form a few feet away. He holds his head with a rough sigh and scoots backwards until he can lean back against his pillow. He eyes Mark, and the scientist watches the anger steadily bleed out of him. “I don’t think I have it in me to take a trip to the doctor every time I want to see you.”

“It—it won’t take that,” Mark tells him quickly. Jack looks many things, not least of all impressed, and before he can halt the words Mark is blurting, “I’m a coward, and for a man who’s almost thirty I’m inordinately shy, and I can’t string words together worth a damn unless there’s no romantic feeling attached to them.” He pauses, lip caught between his teeth as Jack watches him, and then continues as heat crawls up his face, “I like you… a lot, and I’m hoping this is your last hospital stay… but if you want, it doesn’t have to be… o-our last visit.”

“There was never any question about what I wanted,” Jack reminds him a little sourly, and Mark nods sombrely, preparing for the worst. The pilot’s face softens, though, and he smiles. “It hasn’t changed, either.”

Mark can’t help the grin that bursts across his mouth, or the way he ducks his head when Jack gives him a smouldering look. Smirking, Jack curls his fingers at Mark in a come hither motion and Mark unsteadily rises to his feet, coming to Jack’s side. Once he’s there the pilot reaches up and grabs a handful of his shirt, pulling him down with shocking strength for someone in a hospital bed until he’s well past popping Jack’s personal bubble. 

“Now, say it like you mean it,” Jack purrs, wiggling his eyebrows suggestively. 

Mark chortles nervously and puts his hand on Jack’s forearm, lightly curling his fingers around his wrist. “I like you a lot,” he whispers as his face flames. 

“Good,” Jack whispers back, his smile devilish, and lifts his chin up blatantly. 

Mark doesn’t let himself think twice about it, doesn’t let his doubt rise, and he leans down to press a chaste, brief kiss to Jack’s lips. The pilot is whining instantly as he pulls back, though, both hands clawing in his shirt and keeping him bent at the waist when he would have stood up. 

“Cheapo,” Jack pouts, and brings him back down. Their mouths meet innocently enough, but then Jack is opening his and licking a winding line along the seam of Mark’s lips, teasing him to open up. Helpless, he does, and Jack’s tongue surges inside with all the power and swiftness of a force of nature, both pale hands now clamped around the back of Mark’s neck. He’s at the Jaeger pilot’s mercy now, and as he sags under Jack’s caressing fingertips, his damp and wicked tongue, he feels all of his doubt and worry leaving him like a tree losing its foliage in the wintry air.

“Oh, that is so cute,” Signe’s voice coos on Mark’s left, and he jerks away from Jack’s hypnotic kisses with reluctance and surprise. “No, please, continue. Jack likes to brag about how fantastic a kisser he is, so it’s about time someone reaps the benefits of that, don’t you think?”

“Uh,” Mark says at length. 

“Leave him alone, Wiishu,” Jack grunts, nearly tugging Mark’s arm out of its socket to get him to bend again. “And you, get back down here. I’m concussed and maimed, I need that tender, loving touch.”

“Kissing will not make you better,” Mark argues with an embarrassed glance at Signe, but he’s already bending.

“Phooey it won’t,” Jack scoffs. He tilts his face up, winking and puckering his lips, and Mark kisses him tenderly. “Much better,” Jack hums against his mouth, keeping him down by the hand fisted in his shirt. “You should listen to me more often.”

“Should I?” Mark muses, pecking the corner of his mouth. 

Jack’s eyes speak volumes when Mark leans back to look into them and his next words may be light, but their secondary meaning is anything but. “You definitely should,” Jack says, with eyes that smile like starlight, “indefinitely.”

*

“Swim time,” Jack sing-songs as he barrels into Mark’s lab, beelining for his desk. He hauls Mark away from his work mid-scrawl with a hard grip, spinning the rolling chair around until he has an armrest in each hand and he stands facing Mark. “Hey, guess what?”

“It’s swim time?” Mark hazards a guess, grinning, and Jack points finger funs at him. 

“Swim time,” he says, winking, and darts back out of the lab. “Come on, chop chop!” 

“Newt, I’m taking lunch,” Mark calls, and Newt makes a vaguely affirmative noise in reply. Mark discards his lab coat then hastens after his boyfriend, shaking his head when he sees that Jack’s already made it to the end of the hall. 

He catches up at the locker rooms to the pool, where Jack is already half-nude and shedding his pants. Mark looks away pointedly while Jack finishes changing, and he’d say it’s modesty but really it’s because he knows that if he knew what Jack looked like completely naked, he’d never get anything done ever again. 

He follows Jack’s lead and starts undressing, grabbing the trunks Jack hands him as he’s got his jeans around his ankles and watching with amusement when Jack jogs off to the pool without him. He switches his boxer briefs for trunks and stuffs his clothes on a shelf in Jack’s locker. 

Jack is swimming laps when he comes out so he takes a short run and jumps into the water, cannonballing like a champ and causing a massive splash. As he submerges he readjusts his shorts and then kicks for the surface, tossing his head and shoving hair from his eyes. Across the pool Jack has reached the other end and surfaced so Mark redirects himself and paddles over. 

“How’s work?” the pilot asks him sensually, hands sliding purposefully over Mark’s chest and making him shiver as he grabs onto the pool ledge for support. 

“Irritating,” Mark replies, then hums in pleasure when Jack leans forward to kiss the juncture of his jaw and neck. “The Kaiju Blue from Stinger is bioaccumulating in the ecosystem more rapidly than I expected, and having another Kaiju die in the region so soon after hasn’t helped, and the counter-serum that I developed with Newt hasn’t done as impressively as I was hoping it would. Newt thinks it’s an imbalance of the globulin proteins of the Kaiju blood versus their receptors in the serum, but it’s probably the globulin chains themselves—”

“Hey, handsome,” Jack murmurs to his earlobe. Mark shivers again as his hands pave their way around Mark’s waist, bringing them close together. 

“What?” 

“When I asked you how work was,” Jack says quietly, his smile mischievous, “the correct response was, “Fine, but not as fine as you”. Now try again.”

Mark chuckles into his wet shoulder, nipping the skin with his teeth. “Rude. Don’t ask about my day if you’re going to be incorrigibly needy instead of listening.”

“I listened just fine,” Jack rebuttals, smirking. “The serum thing isn’t working awesome, the Kaiju Blue is a thing, and the fish are dying or something. See, I paid attention.”

“Flawless,” Mark says dryly and tweaks his nose. Jack giggles and smooths his hand over Mark’s hair, and something warm bursts inside him at the soft look in the Jaeger pilot’s eyes. He’s not surprised when Jack leans in, lips parting as he seeks out Mark’s mouth with his own. 

With a steadying hand on the pool ledge Mark uses his other to keep Jack obnoxiously close as they kiss, so close that their chests have nothing between them except a thin layer of water. Eagerly Jack clings to him, legs wrapping around his waist and hands threading into his dark, wet hair as he devours his mouth, tilting this way and that with every realignment of their lips. 

“Do me a favour,” Jack says breathlessly when they finally break apart, though the only thing that parts is their mouths. 

“What is it?” Mark murmurs, somewhat dazed as he pets his hand up and down Jack’s back. 

“Stay quiet for me,” Jack whispers, kissing his cheek, and then his legs are loosening around Mark’s waist and his hands are trailing down his chest with intent. 

“O-oh, uh,” Mark blabbers nervously. Gripping Jack’s hip with a suddenly crushing strength he forces his hand to relax and then he’s sliding a palm down Jack’s leg, distractedly feeling the slightly raised lines caused by his injury in the Jaeger, the tiny branded lines from the dismemberment of the enormous machine. “Don’t we, uh, shouldn’t we—”

“We should,” the pilot hums, fingertips easing beneath Mark’s waistband. He plants a kiss on Mark’s neck, again and again, moving down until he’s licking a strip back up to his ear. 

“But—” Mark blurts, but Jack surges up and kisses him soundly, and that nixes that argument. 

Jack nibbles his lips delicately, pulling gently on Mark’s bottom lip, and slowly Mark is forgetting why he’s protesting in the first place. Not completely though, and when Jack’s hand finally slides beneath his shorts he makes a cut off, surprised noise that gets lost in Jack’s mouth. 

“Yeah, baby,” Jack purrs, cupping his hand around Mark’s stiffening cock, “get hard for me, that’s it.”

“Oh my god,” Mark gets out in a strangled voice. Jack’s fingers circle him and stroke and he shudders violently, turning his face away in embarrassment. 

“So sensitive,” muses Jack, but he doesn’t lessen his grip. He does, however, use his other hand to shove Mark’s shorts down over his ass until they slide off his legs, and then fishes his shorts from the water and tosses them onto the edge of the pool with a wet slap. Mark doesn’t even try to stop him, too focused on Jack’s touch and the mad pulse of his heart beneath his ribs.

“Jack,” Mark whimpers as the Irishman adjusts himself on Mark’s body, keeping his legs loosely around Mark’s hips but not tightly enough that he can’t get to Mark’s cock. He strokes Mark apologetically, his hand curled snugly around his dick and slicked by the water, and right away he’s moving in an even up-and-down, base to tip and down again. 

Mark feels the shake of his arms, feels the trembling in his gut with overt disbelief as he eyes Jack’s face and watches Jack watch him for his reactions to the pilot’s touching. It’s intimate, and heady, and Mark can’t speak or else he’ll shatter the illusion that they’re alone in the wide world, that there isn’t a life-threatening presence in the bottom of the ocean that churns out monsters on the regular. 

“Don’t go far away on me,” Jack chides him gently, and Mark blinks. Slowly Jack leans and kisses him and Mark kisses back with fervour, with passion and need and everything that he pretends he doesn’t have until it’s absolutely necessary. They separate and Jack squirms out of his shorts, too, then after throwing his shorts beside Mark’s he repositions himself around Mark’s hips again. His hand starts moving but this time it’s both of them that he’s stroking, all of it a distorted blur under the water’s surface. 

Mark clings to the side of the pool, arms trembling, and tucks his face into Jack’s neck so his sounds aren’t quite so loud. He still makes them, though—soft _ah_ s and _oh_ s, cut off breaths, tiny gasps, stuttering exhales. Jack’s not much better, which Mark is grateful for, and he can feel the bucking of Jack’s slender hips against his thighs, thrusting into each movement of his hand with increasing desperation and need. 

“Hold us up,” Jack whispers breathily, chin lifting high as he lets out a thready moan. Mark bites his way to Jack’s mouth and crushes their mouths together, driving the kiss while Jack jerks them off feverishly. 

Between them the water is choppy and rough from Jack’s motions and it keeps splashing up to hit them on the neck and face, but neither of them feel it. Heat creeps through Mark in palpable bursts, ebbing slightly only to return with force, and as he hears Jack’s moans rise in pitch and volume he feels his own end approaching with unmatched certainty. 

Jack’s hot mouth clamps onto his neck and Mark’s back arches, hips bucking wildly into his hands. “Jack,” he gasps, shuddering brutally as he comes. Pleasure crashes through him in hot waves, spiking and receding only to spike again when Jack’s ministrations don’t taper in the slightest. He’s about to beg for mercy when Jack moans into his neck and jerks in his arms before slowly, slowly his hand stops moving. 

“That’s pretty unsanitary,” Mark murmurs breathlessly, rubbing his hand down Jack’s spine. 

“Pools have filters for a reason,” Jack shrugs, grinning, and bends to kiss him with gentle ardour. 

They get out soon after that, drying each other off in the locker room. They use big, fluffy towels and end up kissing more than actually drying off, but it’s not exactly a loss in Mark’s book. Having not actually seen anything during their little interlude Mark is still shy about Jack seeing him naked and the reverse, but when Jack just kisses his cheek and says, “Nice cock, babe,” with such a hungry look at his groin that it makes him flush beet red…

Well, he thinks they can work on that.


End file.
